A community for self-published writers to discuss the process of self-publishing, share experiences in the "industry", and read up on self-publishing news.

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Due to popular demand, self promotion is now limited to specific threads, namely a weekly promotional thread.

No [PROMO] posts are allowed

The reasoning behind this is an attempt to clear up the perceived spam from the subreddit and allow our community a chance to catch up on news and help users out.

Check out this one I got on Amazon for one of my books: "3 stars, I am rating it as ok for now because I haven't read it."

Why leave a review at all then? I just don't understand the point of this review. Then there are the others, where one person said "didn't realize it was a short story. I like LENGTHY novels," giving me a 2 or 3 because of that alone. Don't they look at the estimated page count before they purchase? 87 pages.

My latest review, the lady said "I prefer my fiction to be at least plausible" and compared it to fantasy. Its a horror book, of course things are going to happen that don't happen in real life, but it is in no way fantasy.

Anyway, I've gotten 25 reviews so far on the one book and most of them have been awesome. People with honest criticism or praising the way it was written, which really makes makes me smile. I even got a top 1000 reviewer to leave a review, 4/5 stars.

Sorry for the rant. On a positive note, I just finished my 3rd book. The first two were a series. This third one is a whole new story. I still have work to do, cover, editing, etc.. Should be out in March, hopefully.

I saw a review for a book, not mine, that was 1 star and said they hadn't read it yet. So be glad you're not that guy :)

But yeah, sometimes I get those. No, I don't think they should rate it if they haven't read it, but if they have? Then yeah, it's fair game. If they didn't like the genre or the length, those things do get factored in whether or not they are strictly "fair". It should average out with other reviews (some reviewers do tend toward higher star ratings across the board). It's worst when you only have a few reviews.

Things you can do are make sure the genre and length are clearly, clearly marked in the blurb and even in an author's foreward. I do that. "This is a 20,000 erotic romance that contains X, Y and Z."

Also, freebies get rated horribly. 99 cents books suffer from the same thing. People who pick it up because it's cheap, not because they truly want to read it.

To add to darrelldrake's comment, I agree, just accept that some people don't know how reviews work and return your attention to the writing. I've received emails from readers asking me questions about how the book ends while they're reading it! I just reply that they need to keep reading and thank them so much for their time and enthusiasm.

If it's any consolation, when I buy things I look at star ratings skeptically and check out whether the bad reviews actually say anything that seems valid. A general comment like "this book is bad," or "there were lots of typos and grammar errors" doesn't convince me, if there are no specific examples or commentary on the content. (I feel the same about five-star reviews that say, "This was a good book." Not useful.)

There really do seem to be a lot of people who don't know what reviews are for. I'll see reviews on Amazon where someone gives two stars and then complains about the slow shipping of the Amazon affiliate they ordered the item from, without a word about the item's quality. They don't understand that you're supposed to leave the seller review on the seller page, and not the item page.

I've also seen people give poor reviews for items when they either didn't read the description, wanted to use it for something other than what it's actually for, or ruined the item themselves with their own stupidity. The most egregious examples that I can think of were some bad reviews for instant-read meat thermometers (for cooking). One said, "The probe on this isn't long enough to take the temperature of my compost heap." Another said, "I put this in my dishwasher, and it broke. Worthless." It was ridiculous that those were one or two-star reviews.

Yeah, I saw one that left a 3 stars on Amazon saying, "I really want to read this book. Why isn't it not on Nook? I really want to read it on my nook. I'm sad and disappointed it isn't in that format". So dumb.

I typically downvote any review I see like that, as it's the exact opposite of helpful. Same for people who post reviews of something that hasn't been released yet. I know it would probably be a full-time job, but I wish Amazon would filter out reviews like that.

Sadly, this is the age we live in. At least you don't have people with grudges against you intentionally giving you one star reviews without experiencing your work. That kind of thing is pretty common in the video game world.